L&T reports 8 per cent rise in consolidated net profit

The revenue growth was primarily led by infra, hydrocarbon, realty and services businesses, L&T said.

The international order inflow during the quarter stood at Rs 17,680 crore and constituted 31% of the total.

Larsen and Toubro (L&T) on Friday reported an 8% year-on-year rise in its consolidated net profit for Q4FY19 at Rs 3,400 crore. The engineering major’s revenue from operations rose 10% y-o-y to Rs 44,900 crore. Both the revenue and the net profit were slightly better than analysts’ estimates.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) grew 3% y-o-y to Rs 5,600 crore while the EBITDA margin contracted by 80 basis points y-o-y to 12.5%. The order intake for the quarter ended March stood at Rs 56,538 crore, up by 14% y-o-y. The international order inflow during the quarter stood at Rs 17,680 crore and constituted 31% of the total.

“The domestic orders have been disappointing in the context of the fourth quarter. However, it was more than made up by the international order intake. Overall, the quarter ended on a happy note,” chief financial officer R Shankar Raman said.

The revenue growth was primarily led by infra, hydrocarbon, realty and services businesses, L&T said. Shankar Raman told reporters during a press conference that the geo-political situation has been volatile. “There have been challenges around the insolvency resolution process. There has been growing shadow of NPAs. There have been failed business models and failed corporations. (There are) stretched promoters, and a lot of credit squeeze in the system and to add more spice to it, regulators are also keeping pace with the changes that are sweeping around and the regulations keep getting tighter with every passing event,” he said.

The growth in international business was largely contributed by the hydrocarbon segment in the fourth quarter, the firm said.

Maintaining a similar growth guidance for the next financial year, Shankar Raman said, “We will have an order intake of a very similar quantum as the fiscal year 2019. We look at the next year with optimism. We think some of the programmes that we have launched are continuing programmes and they are quite agnostic to any change in the government. I think, we will continue to report between 10% and 12% of order intake. In terms of revenue, we will report a 12-15% growth. In terms of margin, the aggregate of all segments excluding services business, we are reporting 10.5% — the same as the previous year. We hope the margin profile continues to be same next year,” Shankar Raman said.

The management also pointed out that Rs 9,000 crore of slow-moving orders were removed during the year from the consolidated order book, which stood at over Rs 2.93 lakh crore as on March 31, 2019. International order book constituted 22% of the total order book.

Meanwhile, L&T refused to comment on any updates regarding the open offer for Mindtree that is supposed to commence on May 14.